


The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ Moves On

by cero_ate



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Gen, M/M, War time depictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:12:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cero_ate/pseuds/cero_ate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter wishes he could write of the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moving Finger Writes, and Having Writ Moves On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bethynyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bethynyc/gifts).



Walter had learned there were infinitely worse things in war than the blood of a fellow soldier, or even one’s own blood, pouring out, as a sacrifice at Ares' altar. Following the Piper would be a relief from the misery he saw every day. He would not write home to tell of the realities of war, in a way his mother would be prostrate with worry over. He would write anecdotal stories that he accumulated. He would not send them truth in the written word, if he sent any at all.  He was still undecided how much their gentle hearts could take from him. 

Taking out the journal that he allowed to be his savior of truth. He was not a Catholic like the Quebec boy next to him, confessing the reality to a preacher. He could not gain satisfaction from such sharing. 

There was little room in his life for such banality. He felt keenly the life that he had chosen. Chosen, such a cruel word. For who would choose the darkness of war if not for others choosing it first. His fingers itched for not the cold metal of a trigger beneath them but the gentle firmness of a pen full of ink, full of that which is not yet written.  How would he survive this terror of his soul, if not for writing? But every blank page mocked him sternly, telling him to focus on the darkness of the lilies of war than the violets of peace.

The first time he thought to write of the war as it really was, was when he won the medal. He'd won  the medal for condemning a man, a friend to months of torment, of barbarity if he should heal enough to return, of death more likely than not. He was not his father’s son for nothing, he knew a wound of that nature rarely healed well. Not that his father ever had to deal with such h orrors as gunshots inflicted dishonestly from guns meant only to kill, for that was all guns were used for. Kill swiftly, kill slowly, in the end if the flu didn’t get you, the German guns would. Would there be a tomorrow for his friend? He did not think there could be.

He thought again to write, when he found his friend, alone, dead in the trench, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He wondered at the courage the other man had to have to stare down his gun and pull the trigger, to end it once and for all. No, better to simply wish them good cheer for the new year. To ask RIlla of her war baby. Oh to see those eyes fast becoming woman’s eyes, to watch her coo and fret over that hapless bit of hope. He wished he would live to see her become a mother in truth. But his dreams continued and hedid not believe that he would ever see that wonderful day when his beautiful sister would make an uncle of him in truth. She would marry first, he knew it to be true. She was made for womanly virtues. 

He wrote half truths and lies once more, when he wrote his Rilla that he could not form poems of the depths of the war. For who could write his sister of the phallic love he had found? He had found his reason in a tow-headed American boy. He  meant so much more to Walter  than mere friendship could explain. He wanted to write, as sweethearts write, of the tempest of joy in the darkest night. But how would they understand? How would they even try to understand he sought not the Dark Lady of Shakespeare but the youth, fair and Wilde? When he was presented with Una’s faithful heart, he spurned it. When his tow-headed darling presented his own, Walter took it, greedy for him. His  grecian style love, the boy who’s eyes danced, even in the darkest of days. He would do anything to keep him safe. But he could not present him to his family, for their scorn or pity. War had broken him, but made him as well. 

Again he thought of sending word home about the war when the nights were darkest, the lice biting. When the food that he longed to pass his lips but only had sawdust to eat. Of boots that only the piss of men could soften, of hands grown callused won through the taking lives with guns, lives little different than his own. He wanted to write of the carols, so similar to theirs that rang across the No Man’s Land. He wanted to tell Mother of the weary voices lifted in song, praising the mercy of a God long gone from this place. How could he write of a Christmas that never happened? How could he write of men so disillusioned that they played football between the mines? How could he send word of a day’s truce that he longed to last forever, but ended at the stroke of midnight? How could he write them that the German boys' voices sounded no different when lifted to welcome a baby born to save them all?

He tried in the end, to write Rilla, when he saw his Piper coming for him. He could not tell her how much a relief it truly was. For there was little yet holding him to this life. He would meet his Piper with outstretched hands. He would not go gently, but he would go bravely to follow the gentle-eyed creature. For he had at last seen the Piper’s face, and it was awesome, terrible beauty that he would follow until the war was done, until he at last was released from the duty he had volunteered for. His name had been signed in blood, and he knew that never would he find peace until this war was over. Over here, and over there, his brave, homefront girls were fighting for them too. His glorious tow headed lover, he would take Walter’s journal of truth with him . Walter had made the other man promise to keep the memento of lost years if he should fall. He did not worry the other man that he knew it was a when. Only his Rilla knew he was to never come home again, that when he went over the top in the morn, only his body would return. His spirit would be free, and given wings.

At last he opened his eyes, and instinctively he knew that the pain and ugliness was behind him. He was relieved. He was  not made for ugliness of a war that lasted even after death. For having been piped by the Piper, he made endless rounds, betwixt and between the land that no man could pass through unscathed. When he opened his eyes it was bright as midday and his eyes stared into the stream searching for the right word, for a poem to solidify in the gentle eddies of light and water, playing together..  Slowly his eyes adjusted to the bright unfamliar light, and he heard footsteps approaching. He looked up and met eyes that were as familiar as his own, for they were identical to his  own.

Walter  breathed her name out out “Joyce.”

“Walter, my brother.” She held out her hand to him  and he took it in his own, no longer stained with the blood of his friends or his foes. “I feared I would see you here before long.”

“I am glad to be here,” he revealed. “Beauty has been restored, with my coming to rest. And you no longer are alone.” She was beautiful. She looked like their mother, dreamy-eyed and sweet. He thought passingly of Rilla-my-Rilla  as he gazed upon the first baby of the House of Dreams. She was not dressed in white, as one would suppose, but in all the colors spring brought, softly creeping into the world over hillocks of snow. How could a child of the house that dreams built and nurtured be dressed solely in white?

She smiled with soft kindness. “Come. Let me introduce you to Matthew.”

She took his  hand and led him  further into peace and dreams. Once more he wished he could write his family, to tell them he was safe, that he was found, that all ugliness that would never again touch him. But he found the family that time lost to him, and waited, as patient as Joyce, until he could be reunited with them in person.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my usual beta. You're the best ever.


End file.
